For three months I lied to my husband. I snuck around behind his back and I emailed and talked on the phone with first one -- and then up to a dozen -- different men. I had more than 200 emails secreted away in a folder. When my husband would come into the room, I'd snap my computer shut, or click on a different screen quickly, so he wouldn't see what I was doing. By the end, nearly every other sentence I uttered was a lie. And even though I was so nervous and jittery, my husband didn't suspect a thing.
Are you horrified? Yeah, sorry, I was sort of lying to you.
I mean, I did all those things, but it was all part of the planning for my husband's surprise 30th birthday party in Las Vegas in February: When we walked into a Vegas nightclub, 10 of his friends jumped up and yelled, "surprise!"
Those men I was secretly emailing were his best buddies. And all those emails were to plan a weekend celebration he says was the nicest thing anyone has ever done for him.
Still, to pull this off, I had to lie. I had to lie for months. I had to do it convincingly. And it's sort of scary how easy it was.
I mean, seriously: I lied. I was good at it. I stayed up at night thinking of possible scenarios, and how I'd create lies to get out of them. I accurately predicted his reactions to the lies I was weaving. There were some close calls when my lies were almost found out, but I lied my way out of them.
It was all for a worthy cause (but aren't all lies?). I was lying out of love and only temporarily (but isn't that what we say to make ourselves feel better?)
According to her new book, Little White Lies, Deep Dark Secrets, author Susan Shapiro Barash wouldn't be surprised that I pulled off a three-month lie: She argues that lying is a way of life for women.
A man lies as a quick fix, claims Barash, while a woman carefully guards her secrets to create opportunities, keep friends and preserve family harmony. Indeed, lies and deceptions are integral part of the public persona women show to the world. "For the majority of women, the hard work of the lie is the payoff-as long as we pretend to be good girls, cleverly covering our tracks," she writes.
With a mix of anecdotal vignettes, pop-culture references and original research from an online classified posting on Craigslist, Barash offers up deliciously compelling stories and confessions of the many lies women tell the world-and themselves.
It makes a girl wonder...
To learn more about the book, check out my review in the New York Post.